Meta

by Michael Krieger CHAPTER ONE War is a Racket WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people…

by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D. The New American Most pundits and politicians are claiming that the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) is no more than a statutory acknowledgment of a power already possessed by the president to promote “free trade.” For example, presidential candidate and senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) explained his recent vote in favor of the TPA this way: Historically, since FDR virtually every president has had fast track authority. What fast track provides is simply if a free trade agreement is negotiated, that Congress will vote on it up or down without amendments and history has demonstrated for the last 80 years that the only way to get free…

by John W. Whitehead “It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free—to be under no physical constraint and yet be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state, or of some private interest within the nation wants him to think, feel and act. . . . To him the walls of his prison are invisible and he believes himself to be free.”—Aldous Huxley, A Brave New World Revisited “Free worlders” is prison slang for those who are not incarcerated behind prison walls. Supposedly, those fortunate souls live in the “free world.” However, appearances can…

by Michael Snyder Central banking has truly taken over the entire planet. At this point, the only major nation on the globe that does not have a central bank is North Korea. Yes, there are some small island countries such as the Federated States of Micronesia that do not have a central bank, but even if you count them, more than 99.9% of the population of the world still lives in a country that has a central bank. So how has this happened? How have we gotten the entire planet to agree that central banking is the best system? Did the people of the world willingly choose this? Of course…

by William F. Jasper The New American In our companion article “10 Reasons Why You Should Oppose the TPP and TTIP,” we detail some of the most extreme dangers presented by President Obama’s two mammoth pseudo-free trade agreements, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). On May 22, the U.S. Senate approved Trade Promotion Authority legislation (TPA, also known as Fast Track), which greases the skids for passage of TPP/TTIP. Now the fight over TPA has moved to the House of Representatives. There are many reasons why Americans should demand that their congressmen vote against this legislation; we provide seven of them below. 1: TPA…

by James Bovard Last August, Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole attacked an article I wrote, stating that it was “Misleading, inaccurate and unfairly disparages the dedicated (TSA) workforce. … We will not sit back and allow misinformation and conjecture to malign our employees.” Pistole resigned last December — in time to miss the uproar this week about TSA agents failing to detect 95% of the weapons and bombs smuggled past them by Inspector General testers. While Pistole is leading the PR pushback to absolve his former agency, the I.G. report is the latest confirmation that TSA continues blindly blundering and pointlessly abusing Americans’ rights and privacy. Shortly after TSA…

by William F. Jasper The New American Here comes another secret ObamaTrade treaty with enormous ramifications for every American. Wikileaks has released 17 documents related to a mammoth trade agreement the Obama administration has been negotiating that will, purportedly, cover 80 percent of the U.S. economy. It’s called TISA, the acronym for Trade In Services Agreement. It’s a pretty sure bet that 99.99 percent of Americans have never heard of it. But if the U.S. House of Representatives votes to give President Obama Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, better known as “Fast Track”) — and this vote could happen soon — TISA could be rammed through Congress in expedited fashion, along…

by Michael Krieger Efforts to limit seizures of money, homes and other property from people who may never be convicted of a crime are stalling out amid a wave of pressure from prosecutors and police. Their effort, at least at the state level, appears to be working. At least a dozen states considered bills restricting or even abolishing forfeiture that isn’t accompanied by a conviction or gives law enforcement less control over forfeited proceeds. But most measures failed to pass. – From the Wall Street Journal article: Efforts to Curb Asset Seizures by Law Enforcement Hit Headwinds The fact that civil asset forfeiture continues to exist across the American landscape despite outrage…

by Jay Syrmopoulos As the USA Freedom Act was passed and signed into law yesterday, one can’t help wonder why people are more interested with the transformation of Caitlyn Jenner, from Bruce Jenner. Provisions of the Patriot Act, which expired only days ago, were quickly replaced by something every bit as insidious to American civil liberties, and yet the talk of the town is a former olympian’s sex change. The FBI was caught operating a secret Air Force inside the US to spy on Americans and people care more about keeping up with the Kardashians. Police in America have killed over 400 people this year, and dinner conversations are about…

Quotes

Government and freedom are mutually exclusive.

Government is the problem, has always been the problem, and will always be the problem as long as we continue to feed it. Stop voting for it, funding it, doing its dirty work as an employee, contractor, or member of the military, and supporting it in any way and it will cease to exist. Only then will humanity be truly free.- Neo Vida